大学物理实验教学与创新

大学物理实验是理工科大学开设的一门必修基础课,是高等教育的重要组成部分。本文指出了传统大学物理实验教学的弊端,增设计划性实验项目,延长开放时间,改善了大学物理实验教学。     

Investigating the impact of an urban community school effort on middle school STEM-related student outcomes over time through propensity score matched methods

This study investigates the impact of an urban community school reform initiative that focuses on an immigrant and refugee population in middle school. A 6th–8th grade cohort of students in the community school are followed over time and compared to a propensity score matched group on overall GPA, mathematics, and science academic outcomes and traditional college preparedness indicators. Further, a deeper dive into the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity was examined on all outcomes. Findings revealed that students in the urban community school demonstrated significantly more preparedness to enroll in college and move into a STEM field if they desired compared to the matched students. All gender/racial groups in the community school performed significantly higher than those in the matched group. Further, all gender/racial groups of students in the urban community school defied standard academic achievement drops common over time in middle school, and instead increase overall, math, and science grades from 6th to 8th grade.     

Examining preservice teachers' responses to area conservation tasks

The purpose of this work was to explore how elementary preservice teachers responded to area conservation tasks. We administered written pre-assessments, followed by semi-structured interviews with 23 preservice teachers, asking them to respond to and reason with area conservation tasks. Findings highlighted several interesting preservice teachers' struggles when assessing area conservation tasks. In many cases, preservice teachers exhibited struggles similar to students, especially with regards to the justification of their area conservation claims. We provide recommendations to assist preservice teachers in their development of mathematical content knowledge in their teacher education programs, so that in the future they may better plan area lessons that promote procedural fluency from conceptual understanding in area measurement.     

Prospective mathematics teachers’ understanding of the base concept*

The purpose of this study is to analyze what kind of conceptions prospective mathematics teachers¹1. prospective mathematics teachers (hereafter referred to as PMTs)View all notes(PMTs) have about the base concept²2. base concept (hereafter referred to as BC)View all notes(BC). One-hundred and thirty-nine PMTs participated in the study. In this qualitative research, data were obtained through open-ended questions, the semi-structured interviews and pictures of geometric figures drawn by PMTs. As a result, it was determined that PMTs dealt with the BC in a broad range of seven different images. It was also determined that the base perception of PMTs was limited mostly to their usage in daily life and in this context, they have position-dependent and word-dependent images. It was also determined that PMTs named the base to explain the BC or paid attention to the naming of three-dimensional geometric figures through the statement: ‘objects are named according to their bases’. At the same time, it was also determined that PMTs had more than one concept images³3. concept images (hereafter referred to as CIs)View all noteswhich were contradicting with each other. According to these findings, potential explanations and advices were given.     

A multidimensional approach to training mathematics students at a university: improving the efficiency through the unity of social,psychological and pedagogical aspects

The article deals with social, psychological and pedagogical aspects of teaching mathematics students at universities. The sociological portrait and the factors influencing a career choice of a mathematician have been investigated through the survey results of 198 first-year students of applied mathematics major at 27 state universities (Russia). Then, psychological characteristics of mathematics students have been examined based on scientific publications. The obtained results have allowed us to reveal pedagogical conditions and specific ways of training mathematics students in the process of their education at university. The article also contains the analysis of approaches to the development of mathematics education both in Russia and in other countries. The results may be useful for teaching students whose training requires in-depth knowledge of mathematics.     

Emergent models in a reinvention activity for learning the slope of a curve

Introducing the slope of a curve as the limit of the slope of secant lines is a well-known challenge in mathematics education. As an alternative, three other approaches can be recognized, based on linear approximation, based on multiplicities, or based on transition points. In this study we investigated which of these approaches fits students most by analyzing students’ inventions during a lesson scenario revolving around a design problem. The problem is set in a context that is meaningful to students and invites them to invent methods to construct a tangent line to a curve: an implementation of the guided reinvention principle from Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). The teaching scenario is based on the phased lesson structure of the Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS). The scenario was tested with 44 groups of three students in six grade 9 or 10 classrooms. We classified the strategies used by students and, using the emergent models-principle from RME, investigated to which of the four approaches the student strategies connect best. The results show that the groups produced a variety of strategies in each classroom and these strategies contributed to a meaningful institutionalization of the notion of slope of a curve.     

Constrained group balancing: Why does it work

We consider a problem where a set of objects possessing multiple attributes must be partitioned into a certain number of groups so that the groups are as balanced as possible with respect to the number of objects possessing each attribute. This multi-criteria decision problem arises in a variety of practical applications, ranging from assigning students to study groups to designing level schedules for JIT assembly lines. A direct approach, enforcing balance through hard constraints, may lead to infeasibility, but works well in practice. We analyze this phenomenon from the worst-case and empirical perspectives, as well as through an in-depth analysis of one representative practical application – the design of student groups at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. The goals of the analysis are to understand what classes of balancing problems may contain infeasible instances and how prevalent such instances are within these classes, as well as to synthesize practical managerial insights that a decision maker could follow in order to increase the chances that balanced groups can be found.     

清末《蒙学化学教科书》述评

上海文明书局1906年出版的"蒙学系列教科书"是我国第一套完善的蒙学系列教材,对于中国近代教科书的诞生具有里程碑意义。《蒙学化学教科书》作为该系列中的一册,代表着当时化学启蒙教育的最高水平。对该书的出版背景、内容、编排体系及进步意义等方面进行研究,管窥清末化学启蒙教育,对于我国初等化学教育发展研究具有重要意义。     

基于智慧教育理念大学化学教学模式探索实践

基于智慧教学理念,借助智慧教学平台进行教学模式改革是实践智慧教育的重要研究内容。本文以公共基础课大学化学为例,针对其中学生学习主动性差和教学过程信息不对称两个问题,利用微助教教学平台对传统直接讲授教学模式进行改革探索,为大学智慧课堂建设总结四点实践经验以及提供有价值的应用案例。